Students' Illness Spurs Basd Meeting On Trip Guidelines

April 02, 1986|by TIM DARRAGH, The Morning Call

Bethlehem Area School District Acting Superintendent Thomas J. Doluisio met yesterday with district officials to discuss drawing up guidelines that would regulate the duration of student trips and the distance traveled.

Doluisio conferred yesterday afternoon with Liberty High School Acting Principal Jack Saunders and Carl Langkamer, district curriculum specialist for music.

The meeting followed the return Friday night and early Saturday of the Liberty Grenadier Band from a 10-day excursion to England. One band member was hospitalized briefly in England and for three days in St. Luke's Hospital upon his return, while numerous others were reported to have fallen ill during the trip.

Several reasons for the students' illnesses were given by officials on the trip, including poor eating habits, exhaustion, anxiety and homesickness.

"I think the England trip had a great deal of culture value to it," Doluisio said. "The trip was a success in many respects. It was a very rich experience, but I don't know if they needed 10 days."

He said both Langkamer and Saunders reported that the trip was "too long."

Saunders, he said, told him that students were fatigued not only from the length of the trip but also from the busy schedule each day. The students' itinerary listed wake-up calls at 6 a.m. and bedtime generally at midnight every day in England.

Some students and chaperones said not all the students adhered to the bedtime rule. In addition, some band members could have been weakened by poor eating habits. Several students, including Matthew Renninger, the 16-year-old band member who was hospitalized with symptoms of the flu, complained that the food at their London residence was bad. They said many band members either skipped meals or ate fast food regularly on the trip.

Doluisio said a committee would look into drawing up regulations that would limit the length of such overnight trips and the distance traveled.

"One- or two-day trips are not what we're talking about here," he said.

The acting superintendent also said he would ask the Bethlehem Area School Board's Policy Committee to join the discussion about the new guidelines. The board must approve bands' overnight trips, Doluisio added.

He said the district already has guidelines in place that allow for multiday trips once every few years. But those rules, he said, do not set limits on how long the trips may be nor how far away the groups may travel.

Neither the Grenadier Band nor the Freedom High School Patriot Band have plans for more long trips, Doluisio added.

Earlier yesterday afternoon, Langkamer said, "I know that there will always be people who question a large trip. You're never going to please everybody."

He noted that, when trips are planned with too much free time for students, "That's when they get into trouble."

Langkamer also said most of the people he has talked to about the trip have given him positive reports.

"On this trip," he said, "the positives far outweighed the negatives."